Help:Glossary

This glossary is always under construction! You can contribute by adding entries or simply linking them to relevant information. If you write a more comprehensive article, please add a short description on this page in addition to the link.

A

B

A portion of a Biobrick device that is available as a BioBrick product. A protein coding region is a BioBrick device if it is available as a BioBrick product and documented in the BioBrick Data Book.

BioBrick Device

A BioBrick system consisting of one or more BioBrick components that together instantiate a full logical or functional process. Normally, this consists of input protein coding regions that code for the input proteins and a BioBrick computational body that processes the input proteins and generates TIPS at the output sites.

C

canonical model

a simplified model that adequately represents the components and interactions under study (the actual system may or may not be structured like the canonical model).

P

Polymerase Per Second: A measure of number of times that an RNA Polymerase passes out of the regulatory region and into the protein coding region of a BioBrick.

Protein Coding Region

A section of DNA that can cause the generation of a specific protein. In BioBricks, this includes the BioBrick prefix and suffix, the Ribosome Binding Site (RBS), the codons for the protein's amino acids, and the stop codon.

R

Regulatory Region

The canonical model of a BioBrick component asserts that proteins generated as a result of other logical or cellular processes (see Protein Coding Region) as well as other active molecules interact with the computational body of a BioBrick component to produce the output signal. The genetic code of the computational body is represented by a Regulatory Region of DNA.

S

Small Molecule Sensors

A small molecule sensor can trigger gene expression when a small molecule becomes present in a cell's environment. Generally, each sensor is specific only to one or a range of small molecules. These sensors are generally surface proteins that can bind to a small molecule ligand. Upon binding, the surfact protein changes conformation, causing one or more intra-cell signals to induce gene expression. A common method of creating a small molecule sensor is to find (discover or literature research) a cellular pathway that is induced by a certain molecule. The surface protein(s) and intial promotors of the mechanism can be isolated from the wild type cellular pathway and made into a BioBrick part. The isolated surface protein + promotor can be put upstream of a new expression gene and inserted into a cell.